Ship-killing missile could drop from air or be fired from sea

Oct. 7, 2013 - 06:00AM
|

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is working on anti-ship missiles to be fired from the B-1B bomber, above, and the F/A-18 Super Hornet. A prototype was successfully launched in late August. (DARPA)

The Pentagon’s advanced research arm is developing a smarter and deadlier ship-killing missile, capable of evading interceptors and striking capital ships at long range. And it recently reached a new live-fire milestone.

In an Aug. 27 test, an Air Force B-1B bomber fired an inert Long Range Anti-Ship Missile that homed in on a moving ship target and tore through its stacked metal containers for a direct hit. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is overseeing the development, intends to design these anti-ship missiles to be fired from the B-1B and Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets. A sea-launched version would be fired from a cruiser or destroyer’s missile magazines.

The missile packs a punch: its 1,000-pound warhead is double the size of the fleet’s primary anti-ship missile, the Harpoon, and could strike targets beyond 200 nautical miles away.

“It’s designed to take out capital ships that are in a formation, a surface action group,” said Scott Callaway, the program manager of the anti-ship missile at Lockheed Martin. “So they could be deploying a number of countermeasures.”

DARPA has given Lockheed Martin up to $181 million to adapt its Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, or JASSM, into a ship-killer. The JASSM is a fearsome weapon: a 14-foot-long missile that has wings, a vertical stabilizer and triangular-shaped body. It bears a passing resemblance to the bombers that carry it — minus the cockpit windows.

The anti-ship missile flies at subsonic speeds and relies on stealth to defeat jammers and intercept missiles. The missile is guided by “multimodal, multi-spectral” sensors, according to Callaway, who said any more information was classified, as were details about the missile’s aim points and kill criteria. It is likely, however, that the missile could use infrared terminal homing and Global Positioning System input, as is used by the JASSM.

The anti-ship missile is a capability leap past the Harpoon, which has a 75-mile range and cannot be redirected in flight. The newer anti-ship missile also is more stealthy and likely to survive counter-missile interceptors and bullets.

And by being fired from a vertical launch system tube, the new missile can be heavier and go farther than a Harpoon, which is fired from a shorter canister. It can be shot in “fire and forget” mode or it can be directed to a particular area, where the new missile will find the target on its own.

It also can be sent new directions in flight, much like a Tactical Tomahawk cruise missile.

“LRASM is a stealthy missile,” Callaway said in an Oct. 3 phone interview. “It gets its survivability from its stealth, same as JASSM-[Extended Range], and it can autonomously engage enemy warships, which a Harpoon could not do, in a heavy electronic countermeasure environment.”

The missile still needs to go through a series of tests, including launches from ships planned for 2014, and it will likely be years before it arrives in the fleet. Lockheed Martin said it was unable to release the projected date of initial operating capability, and spokespeople for DARPA did not reply to messages sent in early October, after the government shutdown.

But if it passes the tests, officials believe it will be a formidable weapon, capable of burrowing into a target and detonating a huge explosive — enough to cripple an aircraft carrier.